Interest Group on "Biomedical Robotics"

Co-ordinator: Prof. Paolo Dario, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy

Contacts: IGBiomed@mail-arts.sssup.it

Introduction

The field of Biomedical Robotics has recently attracted many robotics research groups who developed a variety of solutions for the application of robotics in the different aspects of clinical activities and for the exploitation of physiological knowledge in the development of bio-mimetic robots.
The main areas that developed within this field are those of Robotics for Surgery, Rehabilitation Robotics, and Bio Robotics.
Main research issues in Robotics for Surgery are the development of robotic tools, tele-operated dexterous tools and hand-held mechatronic tools.
Rehabilitation robotics involves all the topics related to the application of intelligent machines in the assistance to disabled and elderly people and more in general the development of personal robots, able to assist humans in a variety of everyday activities, as a servant or companion.
By Bio-Robotics a wide area is intended, characterised by the adoption of biological solutions in the development of robots; this field also includes humanoid robotics, which is recently attracting the interest of most robotics research groups world-wide.
The problems posed by the medical application fields are very different from traditional robotics problems and require a wider cultural approach, including considerations typical for clinicians, industrial designers, and psychologists.

[back to top]

The EURON Interest Group on Biomedical Robotics

The Interest Group (IG) on Biomedical Robotics aims at providing a framework for discussion and exchange of knowledge among the European researchers in the field and at promoting initiatives favouring their research effort. Thus, the IG will:

• promote scientific events and publications: special sessions and workshop at the major International conferences, special issues on relevant journals;

• deliver concrete products, such as a database of key persons and research groups in the sector, guaranteeing an up-to-date view on the International state of the art; the data-base will rely on web-based tools;

• promote meetings and proper actions to harmonise research efforts on specific issues at the European level, where this may be necessary to increase the strength of Europe towards US / Japanese competitors;

• to interact with the 'Industrial Links' Key Area for promoting the involvement of industries and the transfer of research results towards the market;

• to interact with the 'Education and Training' Key Area for promoting initiatives involving students in the EURON activities and developing new methods and tools for the education of modern roboticists.

[back to top]

Proposed activities and expected results in 2001

Objectives and motivations

The initiatives proposed for the first year of activity of the IG on Biomedical Robotics will exploit the European level of the collaboration within EURON to deal with some of the main open problems i n Biomedical Robotics, which can be envisaged as major bottlenecks preventing from a real development of the field at a clinical, industrial and commercial level, in competition with the US and Asian achievements.
One of the main features of Biomedical Robotics and its areas of application is being 'user-centred', so that robots are conceived to be applied in the service of humans and have to strictly interact with them. In the applications where robots have to strictly interact with human users, in addition to solving the technical problems, safety has to be guaranteed at all levels and also the requirement of acceptability has to be fulfilled.
The EURON framework does not allow (and it is not intended) to cope with the technical problems, and it is however expected that each member carries out their own scientific research and technical developments. Instead, the problems related to guaranteeing safety and fulfilling the acceptability requirements can fruitfully benefit from the European level of the collaboration.

Thus, the objectives of the initiatives proposed for the EURON IG on Biomedical Robotics for year 2001 are:

• to define EURON laws of robotics, to give indications for guaranteeing safety in clinical trials;

• to evaluate acceptability of biomedical robots on a larger European scale, in different cultural contexts;

• to assess the impact of robotic aids on the potential for social and vocational reintegration of disabled people.

In fact, one of the key factors in medical applications is the direct involvement of end users in the design of this kind of user-centred robots, by analysing their needs and preferences and by experimental validation of prototypes through clinical trials with sample end users.
There are no general rules for guaranteeing safety during user trials. Some generic regulations exists in the different European countries and also at the European level, with no specificity to the case of robotics. On the other hand, there is a strong ethical commitment of biomedical robotics researchers in preventing accidents to human users. In addition to the ethical considerations, there is also the practical one inducing to think that each small accident in using robots with people would slow down further developments in most areas of robotics research, for years. The idea of defining EURON laws of robotics is not intended to fill the regulation gap in this field but only to define a list of rules that the member groups wish to respect so as to guarantee a basic level of safety and also a level of quality of their user trials.
Most groups developing prototype biomedical robots usually accomplish user and clinical trials to validate their achievements and to extract indications and guidelines to improve acceptability and helpfulness. A possible bottleneck if general indications are searched for is the lack of a consistent number of cases and numerically significant data. For this reason the proposed initiative aims at defining a small set of tests allowing to gather homogeneous data on the acceptability of biomedical robots in different European contexts. Such tests will be jointly defined within the IG and may simply consist of a same set of questions for the participant users or of a more complex validation protocol.
Furthermore, especially in rehabilitation robotics, the actual helpfulness of robots as aids in everyday life has to be assessed to properly deal with the problem of high costs of robotics. High costs of rehabilitation robotics is preventing its concrete applications despite of the technological advances and the assessed helpfulness and acceptability of existing devices. Such costs can poorly be reduced by technological improvements and even less by economy of scale, due to the narrowness of current market. But if robotic aids can provide disabled persons enough autonomy to reintegrate in the professional life, so as to be productive, and to actually reduce the need of other forms of personal assistance, then the cost of the devices has to be re-evaluated and may result affordable and manageable by the public health care service providers. Therefore, it is crucial to assess the impact of robotics aids in the autonomy of disabled people and in this case, too, it is very important to have the opportunity of gathering data on a large scale and in different European contexts.

Expected results and planned activities

By pursuing the proposed objectives, the EURON IG on Biomedical Robotics will produce:

• EURON laws of robotics: a list of rules shared by all member groups to be followed in user (even clinical) trials to guarantee a basic level of safety;

• EURON protocol for the evaluation of acceptability: a small set of tests or simply questions to be proposed to potential end users in the different user (even clinical) trials carried out by member groups on their prototypes;

• impact of robotics on disabled people's life: a collection of data gathered by member groups on the level of autonomy reached by disable people adopting robotic aids, with reference to their social and vocational reintegration.

In the one-year time frame, the activities will be organised as follows:

• gathering and exchange of knowledge on existing European systems among member groups, with special reference to ongoing or planned user and/or clinical trials: this phase will be co-ordinated by the IG Chair so as to gather homogenous information on ongoing activities of the member groups to the purposes of the IG activities, and all interested member groups are expected to contribute for their side;

this phase will cover the first 3 months of the year

• defining the EURON laws of robotics: this phase will consist of an iterative process of refinement of the proposals coming from all the member groups, by mostly exploiting web tools for exchange of information and discussion;

this phase will cover the first 6 months of the year

• defining a core set of tests for the validation of acceptability of biomedical robots: in this phase, too, proposals and needs from the different member groups will be collected and refined to the final list; the member groups will then commit to perform such tests in their planned user (even clinical) trials;

this phase will cover the first 6 months of the year

• collecting results and analysis of data outcoming from the application of the EURON tests at the different member groups;

this phase will be carried out throughout the year

• collection of data on the impact of rehabilitation robotics on everyday life of disabled people: this phase will consist of a preliminary phase in which the member groups will agree on what data to disseminate within EURON and will then consist of the collection of such data as soon as they will be available;

this phase will be carried out throughout the year.

A graphical description of the time schedule for the proposed activities is given in the following picture.

[back to top]

List of participants

Form A=Form for collection of data on Biomedical Robotics activities
Form B=Form for collection of data on user/clinical trials activities with Biomedical Robots

[back to top]

Budget break-down

The total budget allowed to the activities of the IG on Biomedical Robotics for year 2001 is 16,000 Euros. The budget is intended to co-fund the IG coordination and the participants' activities, in terms of meeting and communication costs (travel, telephone, fax, audio/video-conferencing, mailing, etc.). It will be distributed to the members participating in the IG activities. The specific procedures for reporting costs and allowing payments will be agreed among participants when finally identified.

[back to top]